Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

AlArabiyah documentary highlighting the two archived copies on the Wayback Machine calendar between which NortaLink website was allegedly removed. Last month, September 2025, AlArabiyah published a documentary in Arabic titled "قادة حزب الله.. قصة الاغتيالات". It investigated the assasinations of Hezbollah leaders and the 2024 Lebanon electronic device attacks . AlArabiyah , a Saudi state-owned international Arabic news and media outlet, is one of the most popular news channels in the Middle East and the world. AlArabiyah is so prominent that former president Barack Obama gave it his first formal interview as president of the US on January 26, 2009. The documentary is published on YouTube under multiple channels/accounts that belong to AlArabiyah including AlArabiyah , AlArabiyah Screen , and AlArabiyah Programs . It investigated Norta Global Ltd, the fake company that sold the explosive electronic devices (pagers and walkie talkies that exploded on September 17th and 18...

Old Dominion University once again lived up to its Monarch spirit on October 11, 2025 , as the College of Sciences , Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry , and   Michael and Kimthanh Lê Planetarium   joined forces to host the Reign in Science 2025 program — a day filled with exploration, creativity, and curiosity. Reign in Science Day is Old Dominion University’s annual campus-wide STEM outreach event designed to spark scientific curiosity among K–12 students and their families . Hosted by the College of Sciences , the program brings together faculty, graduate students, and research groups from across departments to showcase hands-on experiments, interactive demonstrations, and real-world applications of science and technology. The goal is simple: to make science accessible, fun, and inspiring for learners of all ages while giving the community a glimpse into the groundbreaking research happening at ODU.   This #FlashbackFriday we look back at our very first...

goo.gl/0R8XX6 is now 404 on the live web.  It's been nearly two months since Google stopped redirecting some of its goo.gl short URLs  (August 25, 2025). In previous posts, I looked at how many of these goo.gl URLs that Wayback Machine had archived ( at least 1.3M at the time ), and estimated 4,000 goo.gl short links used in scholarly publications would be lost .  In early September, I verified that Google had indeed implemented this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. It's now mid-October, and I'm just now getting a chance to write up this behavior. While the redirections are missing from the live web,  many (most? all?)  have been archived , and it also turns out they leave a live web tombstone.  First, let's look at the live web goo.gl URLs. The ones that were not lucky enough to receive traffic in "late 2024" no longer return a sunset message, and now return a garden variety HTTP 404 (image above, HTTP response below):  % curl -Is https:/...

  In the summer of 2025, I was selected for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) , a program that introduces new contributors to open source software development. I had the opportunity to contribute to the Internet Archive , an organization I have long admired for its efforts to preserve digital knowledge for all. Numerous open source organizations annually participate in the program as mentoring organizations ( 2025 mentoring organizations ), and that includes the Internet Archive . As a GSoC contributor, I was mentored by Dr. Sawood Alam , Research Lead of the Wayback Machine and WS-DL alum. Over the coding period, our project focused on detecting social media content in TV news, specifically through logo and screenshot detection. My work as a contributor is documented in my previous blog post , while this post highlights the GSoC program and my experience in it. Becoming a GSoC contributor Becoming a GSoC contributor is open to any beginners in open source (student or non-student) wh...